MusicWeb International One of the most grown-up review sites around 2024
60,000 reviews
... and still writing ...

Search MusicWeb Here Acte Prealable Polish CDs
 

Presto Music CD retailer
 
Founder: Len Mullenger                                    Editor in Chief:John Quinn             


Some items
to consider

new MWI
Current reviews

old MWI
pre-2023 reviews

paid for
advertisements

Acte Prealable Polish recordings

Forgotten Recordings
Forgotten Recordings
All Forgotten Records Reviews

TROUBADISC
Troubadisc Weinberg- TROCD01450

All Troubadisc reviews


FOGHORN Classics

Alexandra-Quartet
Brahms String Quartets

All Foghorn Reviews


All HDTT reviews


Songs to Harp from
the Old and New World


all Nimbus reviews



all tudor reviews


Follow us on Twitter


Editorial Board
MusicWeb International
Founding Editor
   
Rob Barnett
Editor in Chief
John Quinn
Contributing Editor
Ralph Moore
Webmaster
   David Barker
Postmaster
Jonathan Woolf
MusicWeb Founder
   Len Mullenger


 
REVIEW


Advertising on
Musicweb


Donate and keep us afloat

 

New Releases

Naxos Classical
All Naxos reviews

Chandos recordings
All Chandos reviews

Hyperion recordings
All Hyperion reviews

Foghorn recordings
All Foghorn reviews

Troubadisc recordings
All Troubadisc reviews



all Bridge reviews


all cpo reviews

Divine Art recordings
Click to see New Releases
Get 10% off using code musicweb10
All Divine Art reviews


All Eloquence reviews

Lyrita recordings
All Lyrita Reviews

 

Wyastone New Releases
Obtain 10% discount

Subscribe to our free weekly review listing

 

 

alternatively
CD: AmazonUK AmazonUS
Download: Classicsonline


Lita GRIER
Five Songs for Children (1962/1999) [7.16] (1,7)
Sneezles (1972) [3.21] (1,8, 9, 10)
Five Songs from A Shropshire Lad (1955) [6.59] (6, 8)
Two Songs from Emily Dickinson (1961) [6.26] (1, 7)
Songs from Spoon River (2004 - 2008) [30.38] (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8)
Reflections of a Peacemaker (2007) [12.31] (11, 12)
Michelle Areyzaga (soprano) (1); Elizabeth Norman (soprano) (2); Scott Ramsay (tenor) (3); Alexander Tall (baritone) (4); Levi Hernandez (baritone) (5); Robert Sims (baritone) (6); Welz Kauffman (piano) (7); William Billingham (piano) (8); Anne Bach (oboe) (9); Tina Laughlin (percussion) (10); Chicago Childrens Choir/Josephine Lee (11); John Goodwin (piano) (12)
rec. 8-9 September, 13 October 2008, 8 April 2009, Bennett-Gordon Hall, Ravinia, Highland Park, Illinois. USA
CEDILLE RECORDS CDR 90000 112 [67.45]

Experience Classicsonline

Quite what the name Spoon River means to you probably depends on your cultural background. For me it will forever be associated with a piece by Percy Grainger. But for many people Spoon River will mean Edgar Lee Masters' Spoon River Anthology, a collection of free-form poems which describe the life of a fictional small town named for the real Spoon River which ran near to Masters' home. Each poem is an Epitaph, delivered by the dead person to which it refers. Masters' depictions of small town life are masterly and mix the everyday with the rather shocking goings-on which happen in the background.

In 2004 American composer Lita Grier set five songs. These were followed by further settings so that the complete cycle now runs to ten songs, each one setting one of Masters' poems. Grier sets the songs for high soprano, second soprano, tenor and baritone, accompanied by piano. Running to some thirty minutes in length it is Grier's longest work to date.

Grier's career as a composer is somewhat interesting. This disc contains songs written by her from 1955 to 2009 but this time period is deceptive as she was silent for a long time. Grier studied at UCLA under Roy Harris and Lukas Foss. Her early songs and chamber music were highly praised, but she stopped composing as she found herself out of sympathy with the prevailing serialism of the 1960s. Perhaps also an element of prejudice against female composers might have been present as well. But her existing songs and chamber music had something of a life of their own and in the mid-1990s Grier took up composing again.

The song-cycle which opens this disc, Songs for Children, spans this period as Grier started it in 1962 and finished it in 1999. Her style did not radically change though perhaps she wrote with a greater degree of control, a stronger touch of austerity. The Songs for Children set a variety of poets and the songs certainly do not talk down to the children they are aimed at. On this disc soprano Michelle Areyzaga brings fine diction to the songs, emphasising the importance of the words. Unfortunately Areyzaga's vibrato and rather mature tone seem a trifle unsuitable for the songs and I would have preferred a slimmer, more focused voice. But her performances are convincing and she makes a good advocate.

Areyzaga appears on the next track, a 1972 setting of Sneezles, the poem by A.A. Milne. This song raises some rather interesting points. Grier's style has a rather American feel, think Copland and Barber and though her songs have a degree of metropolitan sophistication, the wide open plains never seem to be too far away. So her settings of classic English texts have a rather entrancing mix of Old World and New World.

Not everyone will like this and in the Five Songs from A Shropshire Lad, which date from 1955, I found that the settings of the better known poems could not drown out the more familiar versions. There are a number of other influences here, including a hint of American popular song! The baritone, Robert Sims, gives the songs good commitment and a decent sense of line. In a couple of the songs I felt that the part lay a little too low for him.

Songs from Spoon River are impressively sung by Elizabeth Norman, Michelle Areyzaga, Scott Ramsay, Alexander Tall and Levi Hernandez. They create a good narrative feel and bring out the words so that we get a real sense of the characters addressing us. Elizabeth Norman, unfortunately seems to have some trouble with the high tessitura of her songs and does not always sound comfortable. Grier takes the poems at face value and sets them seriously straight. I felt that there was sometimes a sly, satiric undercurrent in the poems (and in Masters' depiction of small town life) that Grier misses.

The final item on the disc is a set of choral pieces sung by the Chicago Children's Choir. Here Grier sets poetry by Mattie J.T. Stepanek, a young man who died in 2004 at the age of 14. The poems are quite sophisticated and Grier's settings again do not talk down. In fact the choir makes a surprisingly mature sound and it was only after my first listen that I realised that they were a children's choir.

This is an interesting disc of one of the forgotten voices of American 20th century music. Whilst these performances are not perfect, Grier has found a group of fine advocates and all of the pieces receive strong, direct performances. If the alternative, tonal pathways of late 20th century music interest you then do try this disc.

Robert Hugill

 


EXPLORE MUSICWEB INTERNATIONAL

Making a Donation to MusicWeb

Writing CD reviews for MWI

About MWI
Who we are, where we have come from and how we do it.

Site Map

How to find a review

How to find articles on MusicWeb
Listed in date order

Review Indexes
   By Label
      Select a label and all reviews are listed in Catalogue order
   By Masterwork
            Links from composer names (eg Sibelius) are to resource pages with links to the review indexes for the individual works as well as other resources.

Themed Review pages

Jazz reviews

 

Discographies
   Composer
      Composer surveys
   National
      Unique to MusicWeb -
a comprehensive listing of all LP and CD recordings of given works
.
Prepared by Michael Herman

The Collector’s Guide to Gramophone Company Record Labels 1898 - 1925
Howard Friedman

Book Reviews

Complete Books
We have a number of out of print complete books on-line

Interviews
With Composers, Conductors, Singers, Instumentalists and others
Includes those on the Seen and Heard site

Nostalgia

Nostalgia CD reviews

Records Of The Year
Each reviewer is given the opportunity to select the best of the releases

Monthly Best Buys
Recordings of the Month and Bargains of the Month

Comment
Arthur Butterworth Writes

An occasional column

Phil Scowcroft's Garlands
British Light Music articles

Classical blogs
A listing of Classical Music Blogs external to MusicWeb International

Reviewers Logs
What they have been listening to for pleasure

Announcements

 

Community
Bulletin Board

Give your opinions or seek answers

Reviewers
Past and present

Helpers invited!

Resources
How Did I Miss That?

Currently suspended but there are a lot there with sound clips


Composer Resources

British Composers

British Light Music Composers

Other composers

Film Music (Archive)
Film Music on the Web (Closed in December 2006)

Programme Notes
For concert organizers

External sites
British Music Society
The BBC Proms
Orchestra Sites
Recording Companies & Retailers
Online Music
Agents & Marketing
Publishers
Other links
Newsgroups
Web News sites etc

PotPourri
A pot-pourri of articles

MW Listening Room
MW Office

Advice to Windows Vista users  
Questionnaire    
Site History  
What they say about us
What we say about us!
Where to get help on the Internet
CD orders By Special Request
Graphics archive
Currency Converter
Dictionary
Magazines
Newsfeed  
Web Ring
Translation Service

Rules for potential reviewers :-)
Do Not Go Here!
April Fools






Untitled Document


Reviews from previous months
Join the mailing list and receive a hyperlinked weekly update on the discs reviewed. details
We welcome feedback on our reviews. Please use the Bulletin Board
Please paste in the first line of your comments the URL of the review to which you refer.